Holland, a contributing editor to the Nation,
provides an overly exhaustive compendium of LBJ's White House conversations in the immediate aftermath of JFK's murder, the rationale and mechanics of forming the Warren Commission, and virtually every presidential conversation (however trivial) touching on the assassination thereafter. Much of Holland's book is redundant with Michael Beschloss's recent and better executed Taking Charge
. Furthermore, much of the balance deals with relatively trivial matters, such as Johnson's reactions to his unflattering portrait in William Manchester's Death of a President
and Johnson's monitoring (via Ramsey Clark) of the investigation of JFK's murder conducted by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison. The bulk of the tapes in question were released in 1993 and have, for the most part, already been thoroughly digested, parsed and summarized by not only Beschloss but other historians (most notably Robert Dallek in Flawed Giant
). Thus Holland's volume struggles to find a raison d'être by claiming other scholars have "misrepresented or misunderstood" the tapes. For junkies who can never get too much in the way of assassination gossip, this book will prove pleasurable. Most others, however, will hesitate to wade through Holland's blizzard of frequently irrelevant detail. Agent, Elaine Markson.
First serial to
Atlantic Monthly. (Sept. 8)
